The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

Rewind (Pinx video 4)
By Marshall Thornton
Kenmore Books, 2019
Five stars

I was blindsided by the opening of this book, which went from zero to horror movie in the blink of an eye. Then, even more weirdly, it settled right down into Noah Valentine normality: Noah with his friends Marc and Louis having breakfast and trying to figure it out. All of this in a couple of pages. Yikes. I was both rattled and impressed.

The Pinx Video series is a sly little thing. These books are overtly funny, simmering with dry, wry humor. Noah Valentine is a sweet, gentle person; a considerate boss and a quietly faithful friend. Noah seems to get himself involved in murders, when all he really wants is to manage Pinx, his video store in Silver Lake, and cope with the reality of living with HIV. Noah is actually rather a sad young man, as well he might be, but there is resilience and strength underneath the sadness.

Set in the early 1990s, these Pinx mysteries are all about the characters, the mildly artsy denizens of this quiet pocket of Los Angeles. Marc and Louis are, somewhat to Noah’s surprise, his family of choice, a fussy middle-aged gay couple who cook for him and worry about him and help him get into all kinds of absurd trouble. His mother, whom we know mostly through telephone conversations (she did visit in the last book and was a great hit with Noah’s friends, much to his annoyance), is an off-screen presence. She is smart and loving, but Noah resists her because, well, she’s his mother. Then there’s the next layer of friends and acquaintances, like Leon and Robert, who play roles in the plot, but are less deeply engaged with Noah. It is the tertiary players who drive the mystery plots and add extra seasoning to the narrative.

Finally, there’s Javier O’Shea, the detective who’s been dancing around Noah since the first book. Javier, still closeted, a Mexican-Irish mix whose dark beauty is noted and discussed by everyone else, is a kind of poignant (in the sense of sweetly painful) foil to the rom-com absurdity of Noah’s life. He is what Noah really wants, but also what Noah (rightly or wrongly) thinks he can’t have – maybe doesn’t deserve. Javier frustrates me, but I think that’s what the author intends. Noah frustrates me, too, but for different reasons. Noah is caught up in his own fears about his future, and while I can’t blame him for this, I desperately wish it was otherwise.

Something Thornton does so nicely is to explore motives – all kinds of motives that drive people to do what they do. It’s not just murderers, but lovers, friends, random acquaintances, and family. Why do we do the things we do? Noah is always wondering about this, even when he’s neatly ignoring his own motivations for denying himself the happiness (I think) he deserves. The end of this book was a bit like a glass of ice water in the face. They may have solved the murder, but they didn’t make Noah happy. Sigh.

And that’s why I keep picking up these books. I don’t care all that much about who gets killed; I care about where the next dead body will take Noah and his friends.